India, May 10 -- Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir, in a recent speech, invoked the two-nation theory that underpinned the movement for the creation of Pakistan as a Islamic State - as a "second Medina", a popular catchphrase of the demand. Against this backdrop, we recommend historian Venkat Dhulipala's Creating a New Medina (2016). The book examines the argument that the creation of Pakistan was "serendipitous" - that its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had wanted to use the demand as a bargaining chip with the Congress but groundswell pushed it into the realm of reality. Dhulipala refutes this with evidence from primary sources. The book also delves into the economic vision for Pakistan at the time - one that was purportedly independent of the dominant paradigms of that time. The careful parsing of the debate within the Islamic religious leadership in the subcontinent over the demand also makes for interesting reading....